


Braiding for Beginners

by Wanderingchronicle



Series: Gift fics [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Awkwardness, F/M, Fluff, Hair Braiding, MAY I OFFER YOU SOME FLUFF IN THIS TRYING TIME
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 07:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15286533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderingchronicle/pseuds/Wanderingchronicle
Summary: Molly needs a little more help, and it comes from an unlikely corner.





	Braiding for Beginners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pjzza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pjzza/gifts).



> This is shamelessly set during some undisclosed point during the game. Fuck the police!

In theory, Molly has always liked the idea of long hair. In practice, though, it didn’t work so well if you didn’t know what to do with it.

Yasha, bless her soul, wore her hair in a mess of braids and tangles, and he’d never seen her take a brush to it. And, frankly, that wasn’t what he wanted for himself.

Jester, short hair. Beau, short hair. Caleb, short hair. Fjord...really short hair.

Nott? Absolutely not.

He’d got his hair to a couple of inches past his shoulders, which was a nice length, falling in thick violet waves. He could tie it up just fine, but he’d seen some people in Zadash with the most splendid braids, and he was pretty sure that he would die if he didn’t figure out how to do them for himself.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t going very well for him.

There was a chipped mirror in his inn room, and much to his disgust it wasn’t doing him much good. More than anything, it was making it very apparent that he had no idea what he was trying to duplicate, and that this was a pointless endeavour.

And, as if the Moonweaver herself was laughing at him, that was the moment Caleb Widogast put his head through the door.

“Hallo,” he says uncertainly, “I came to tell you that dinner is being served downstairs.”

Molly stares at him mutely. It can’t possibly have been this long screwing with his hair in front of the mirror. Absolutely inconceivable, and now he is going to die of embarassment. Well.

After a long moment of silence, Caleb finally ventures a glance at him. “What are you doing?” he asks, taking a step into the room.

There’s not much point in lying. “Well, there’s only so many times one can do a ponytail,” he says, “so I thought I’d try something different, and it turns out braiding is more difficult than it looks.”

“It is only practice,” Caleb grunts unsympathetically, turning Molly’s world upside down in the process, “and you aren’t using enough strands. It is three.”

“What,” Mollymauk responds, attempting to ask the question of  _ What do you mean three _ and  _ How do you know this _ and  _ How can you think this is easy _ at the same time.

Caleb shrugs, walking to stand behind Molly. “When I was in school, if you had hair longer than your collar, you needed to tie it up,” he says, before picking up Molly’s comb.

There’s a few bewildering seconds where Caleb picks up the combs and used it to delicately deconstruct the mess Molly has made, then plucks at his hair near the hairline and holds the resulting strand aloft, deftly splitting it into three. “Like this,” he says, as if this were boring miniutiae rather than borderline witchcraft.

“You can start further back, most do, but your hair is not extremely long so this is tidier. You cross the left strand over the middle, then the right strand over the middle...and then you pick up some hair to add to the left strand,” he monologues, while Molly vainly tries to watch what he is doing, “and you just...keep going until you run out of hair.”

Caleb has a hairtie in his mouth and is staring at Molly’s hair like it holds the answers to the universe, while Molly himself stares mutely at the mirror, trying to figure out how to wrest control of the situation. Caleb Widogast is a man full of surprises, and some days he wonders if he’ll ever get to the bottom of them all.

Eventually, Caleb ties off the end of Molly’s hair, resting his hands briefly on his shoulders before stepping back.

And then, like a spell has abruptly been broken, he backs away a few steps more. “I...should go,” he says, turning and fleeing from the room.

Molly watches him go, chewing his lip anxiously. More mysteries. Caleb seems intent on ignoring any of Molly’s flirtatious overtures, but there’s the occasional thread of  _ something else _ , of Caleb recoiling from things he otherwise doesn’t seem to mind.

He’s not going to push, he thinks, but he can’t help but be curious.

**Author's Note:**

> I like prompts! Give them to me at wanderingchronicle @ tumblr or VoxLexicon#4486 on Discord.


End file.
